Skepticism

EVENTS

Hey, Arizona!

Your current superintendent of public instruction is reviewing state curricula, and she has an agenda.

Douglas has been working for awhile now to bring a little Sunday school into science class. This spring she took a red pen to the proposed new science standards, striking or qualifying the word “evolution” wherever it occurred.

This, after calling for creationism to be taught along with evolution during a candidate forum last November.

They’re about to do a final edit of the state science standards, and she appointed Joseph Kezele to the 8-person review team.

Kezele is a biology teacher at Arizona Christian University. He also is president of the Arizona Origin Science Association and, as Flaherty puts it, “a staunch believer in the idea that enough scientific evidence exists to back up the biblical story of creation.”

Evolution, he said, is a false explanation for life and should be taught so that students “can defend against it, if they want to.”

“I’m not saying to put the Bible into the classroom, although the real science will confirm the Bible,” Kezele told Phoenix New Times in an interview on Wednesday. “Students can draw their own conclusions when they see what the real science actually shows.”

He argued that scientific evidence supports his creationist ideas, including the claims that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs were on board Noah’s Ark.

Comments

As a longtime silent reader from Germany I continue to be baffled by the lunacy which frequently occurs within the American educational system. Here in Germany, someone with the proposal to teach creationism in school would be laughed at. On the other hand, Germany has its own problems with anti-intellectualism, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.

At the moment, as the Nazis are growing stronger again (though in the guise of the ultra-conservative AfD party) and many of them have, in accordance with their (and I swear this is true) secret manuals for the infiltration and destruction of democratic society, taken on jobs as kindergardeners or teachers. The leader of the extreme right in the AfD, Bernd* Höcke, even worked as a history teacher before he became a politician…

Some people say that he is named Björn, which is of course ridiculous. Also fake news.

Some consolation: Diane Douglas lost her primary election and will be leaving office in a few months – https://ballotpedia.org/Diane_Douglas . May Arizona prevent her from causing so much harm to the educational system before she does. And may Arizona elect a better superintendent in November.

#3 Snarki: No question, you guys have the worse deal at the moment. I laughed when people praised John McCain as a great politician, simply because Trump is so much worse. The problem is that the general worldwide trend towards far-right nationalism influences Germany as well. Things are being said by elected politicians that would have gotten you jailed before the refugee crisis, and Nazis are openly marching in the streets, showing the Nazi salute.

@jrkrideau, Rich Woods:
Pretty much. As others have noted, the U.S. spent a long time even before its official founding trying to reconcile ‘converting the heathens’ and ‘enslaving the heathens’, and managed this by pushing as primary the strains of ‘the only world that matters is the next one’ that existed in Christianity. That way, the slaves could be taught via Christianity that it was their lot in life to suffer but they would be rewarded for it in the next world, as long as they were stoic about it in this one. Meanwhile the plantation owners self-importantly went to church and ignored all the lessons about rich men.

Part of the problem is that the extreme focus on the afterlife and the downplaying of the current life are still there even after slavery has (officially) ended. It was always for social control, just now the social control has been expanded to a lot more ‘right thinking’ about various political positions as well.

Evolution […] should be taught so that students “can defend against it, if they want to.”

Luckily for him, evolution doesn’t allow for defending against it, or he wouldn’t exist to write such a silly opinion in the first place.

I’ve never understood the people who insist a book that they KNOW was written long before we discovered the scientific method is somehow an accurate scientific textbook. The actual science that explains and studies how life evolved is far more wondrous and fascinating than superstitious explanations for natural processes. The religious arguments I’ve encountered are generally based on misconceptions that can be summed up as “I’m not descended from a monkey. I’m not an animal.” Informing them that the other options are vegetable or mineral is always fun.

“I’m not saying to put the Bible into the classroom, although the real science will confirm the Bible,” Kezele told Phoenix New Times in an interview on Wednesday.

Great! Once the big Bible breakthrough occurs I’m sure the scientist will be the first to argue for updated textbooks. In the meantime we’ll simply stick to teaching the stuff science has already confirmed. I guess that’s the creationism issue settled, then. Back to peace, quiet and a solid education.

it’s all just whistling past the grave yard in reality. in a blink of an eye they will be gone having succeeded in doing nothing but try to perpetuate their own fear and foist it on everyone else.
the B Ark is too good for them
uncle frogy

I heard this as a plan for setting science education standards and I wish more school boards would use it when these creationists infect the review panels:

Since there seems to be some “controversy” regarding the biology standards, I propose the following method: We will conduct a survey of the peer reviewed biology literature of the last 15 to 20 years, analyzing the papers to see what theories they put forward with regard to the diversification of life upon this planet. We will then divvy up the education standard to match the breakdown. For example, if we find that X% of the papers are representative of Y% theory regarding the diversification of life, then the standard will reflect X% amount of curricula devoted to Y theory and so on.

Of course, I suspect that this will just degrade the discussion to what gets included in the collection of “peer reviewed biology literature,” especially when they realize that given the minuscule amount of time spent on the diversification of life in high school biology, any serious review of the literature will at best leave merely a few seconds of class time to be devoted to creationism, and even then it would be as a negative example. They would insist that DI and AiG were somehow legitimate research institutions.

But as a concept, it should be able to work. Just the point of displaying open-mindedness on the subject and calling them out on their claims that “more and more scientists are questioning evolution” should be good. If that were so, then we should be seeing more and more papers in the literature doing exactly that. So let’s do that survey and see where the chips fall.

@14 AstroLadHow long will University of Arizona and Arizona State continue to accept bio majors from Arizona schools after this nonsense is instituted?

Probably longer than any decent university in any other state in the union. Let’s ask PZ about how happy UMM would be to have a few enroll. I am sure that PZ would be delighted though.

Don’t even think of going to a foreign university—well, at least, after the first two or three Arizona students arrive in Country X and the stories spread.

It seems to me that a couple of years ago, I read about some US grad–level bio students somewhere in the Wilds of Britain wondering why Intelligent Design was not being included in their course. I cannot remember if the question was greeted with stunned silence or hysterical laughter.